There are many situations, such as in agricultural applications, where controlling the path of a vehicle is useful. A vehicle may move along a curvilinear trajectory of a base path. After completing the curvilinear trajectory, the vehicle is required to repeat similar trajectory (or, perhaps, several trajectories) at some offset distance from the curved base path. For example, this situation may arise when a tractor plows a plot of land with curvilinear boundaries.
Traditionally, an offset path for a vehicle is generated by translating each point of the base path at a distance d in a direction perpendicular to the base path. However, an offset path generated in this manner does not take into account the vehicle tolerances set by the vehicle's physical characteristics. In other words, a vehicle may not be capable of following the offset path generated for the vehicle because of the physical constraints of the vehicle. An example of such a constraint is a wheel turning radius.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to be able to automatically and reliably create offset paths at any given distance from the original curve that a given vehicle can traverse and which could be repeated in an automated mode.